I saw the Dutch documentary #followme [0] the other day, about the incredible fakeness of Instagram, where for a couple of dollars you can buy 1,000's of Likes / Followers. And everyone - up to the kids in high school - is doing just that, to buy popularity (the metrics have actually become the determining factor for real-life popularity for many people).
Apparently one of the big shots in this shady industry is a Dutch guy (multi-millionaire now), who manages tens of popularity-boosting websites directly or indirectly (and not only for Instagram). He caters to celebrities as well, who sometimes buy millions of followers. For these high-profile actions they arrange special events, according to the docu, like publishing 'fakish' news articles to established news sites (Forbes was mentioned) to coincide with the artificial boost in popularity.
This can be considered fraud too, as 'popular' users benefit from influencer marketing deals (free clothing, travel, tickets, money, etc.) and there is a continuous cat and mouse game between illegit popularity boosters and marketeers. Professional investigative companies jumping on this train to filter out the bad apples, etc.